A Chinese Official's Use of ChatGPT Accidentally Revealed a Global Intimidation Operation (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0180868798
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/02/27/185250/a-chinese-officials-use-of-chatgpt-accidentally-revealed-a-global-intimidation-operation
- Source link: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/chatgpt-china-intimidation-operation
> The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down.
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> The report offers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. The influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms, according to OpenAI.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/chatgpt-china-intimidation-operation
Not only that (Score:4, Funny)
Also, it accidentally revealed a global [1]dup [slashdot.org] operation.
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/2045225/chinese-officials-use-of-chatgpt-revealed-a-global-intimidation-opperation
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah! I submitted that first one (first time for me), and msmash posted both stories.
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would someone doing official government business using ChatGPT like a diary to document what they were doing? I don't understand. Aren't the context windows limited? Would it even "remember" everything you've told it? That just seems like an odd use for an LLM, and obviously OpenAI uses all that information for whatever they want.
Re: (Score:2)
On the plus side, we've now got confirmation that Chinese officials are just as dumb as those running our own country.
Re: (Score:2)
> most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts
I don't think that means what whoever typed it thought it meant. My bet is English is not their native language.
-- or they asked AI to write it --
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing they're writing progress reports using ChatGPT. Kinda like a police report, but the police are secret police doing bad stuff to people the govt. doesn't like. Wait that's what cops do. Hm.
Ambitions (Score:4, Insightful)
This is increasingly like a cartoon I saw years ago. Kid telling his Dad that when he grew up he wanted to go into organized crime. Without missing a beat his Dad asked 'which... government or private sector'? Makes one wonder if the Chinese are playing catchup with the other big players... Russia, USA, Israel, etc. Everybody seems to be doing it and there is, sadly, no authoritative place one could turn to discrimiate the real from the fake. Thought is that how can any organized society, economy, etc hold together without reliable information?
Re: (Score:2)
> there is, sadly, no authoritative place one could turn to discrimiate the real from the fake.
that's easy: they are "authoritarian regimes", everything they do is fake and evil. we otoh are "virginal beings of light and beacons of freedom", everything we do is real and right. that we are the ones having started most of the wars is just us honoring our sacred duty to the light and to the one true god, you heathen.
> Thought is that how can any organized society, economy, etc hold together without reliable information?
we hardly ever had any, not even in ancient times. the lies to justify rome's invasion of gaul were very similar to the lies to justify the invasion of irak two millenia later. it's always t
Re: (Score:2)
Unless your name is Edward Snowden, my understanding is that the US doesn’t care much if someone gets disgusted with our system and decides to move somewhere else. It’s their decision. And, what’s the point of employing an army of skilled people to make a few hundred unhappy people even more miserable? What a colossal waste of human effort for basically no return on investment. I’m fine if China and Russia want to utterly waste their human capital on that sort of thing. Us? We need g
Oh, really? Trust me bro?! (Score:2)
> A sprawling Chinese influence operation [...] focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI
American company which has execs who have made [1]vast donations to Trump [sfgate.com] accuses China of something and provides no proof. News At Eleven!
> The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said
Yes, that totally sounds realistic and just t
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/brockman-openai-top-trump-donor-21273419.php
The real takeaway (Score:5, Insightful)
So the real take away from this is that OpenAI is monitoring everything you send to ChatGPT, and is probably using some form of search across those hundreds of millions of prompts to find this type of activity.
Why the fuck...? (Score:2)
ChatGPT belongs to a US company, right?
Then why the holy fuck are we allowing the Chinese to use our advanced shit like this?
They should be barred from our AI....barred from our social media, etc.
Is this not common sense?
Re: (Score:2)
Because if you can get the Chinese government to share its secrets with your computer, then you get to be the new Chinese government. How can you look at the power Putin has over Trump and not want something similar?
As a pro-US person, I want China to be using these US-hosted tools, and I want people like Hegseth prosecuted for anything they knowingly leak.
I'm not saying every server in the US needs to have a "please upload your most valuable secrets here" form, but shouldn't there be some? It might as well
Re: (Score:2)
It's not "ours" it's the corporation's until the United States decides to nationalize it. There's no reason to restrict Chinese people from using ChatGPT. Or anyone really. It's more important that OpenAI understands what people are using their platform for, and whether what they're doing harms anyone else. That's kind of a large and nebulous question depending on your definition of "harm" but things that would be illegal in the country of jurisdiction (US and EU) are a good start.
We can, afaik, sign up and
Re: (Score:2)
It sucks up all data, including your prompts and information. "AI" is really a data siphoning program that is an end run around all protections afforded. That is why they want AI to be a lawless data collector under the guise of "not hampering innovation"
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't be news if you looked at their terms of service -- which you should. The ToS explicitly say they use a combination of automated systems, human review, and reports to identify and investigate violations of their usage terms, including violence, abuse, fraud, impersonation, disinformation, foreign influence campaigns , abusive sexual content, and academic dishonesty. This includes "anonymous" sessions that are saved for a minimum of 30 days. You have no expectation of privacy from the provider's
Re: (Score:2)
Partial concurrence, but slightly deeper if you consider that they have their own Chinese AI systems that we don't have access to. Seems pretty likely they wanted to compare the results--but the Chinese are also glad to know more about how their usage of non-Chinese systems are being tracked.
I'm not saying they are being nice about this (or anything), but they are probably mostly amused by the public blabbering. It might have been more clever to keep that part under a hat, or even try to feed them poisoned